Up until now, my brother in law and I have used a spare bathtub upstairs at his house. Filled with a bunch of ice water to cool down hot wort, and then maintained with cold water and frozen bottles, fan pointed at the 2 carboys, and dropping the AC to about 65 (he doesn't mind running his entire upstairs for 2 wks during active fermentation). Our bathtub system actually works perfectly, but you do have to baby it and monitor very closely, especially during the first couple days of fermentation.
We recently picked up an old school milk-cooler from a going out of business sale for $50 at a local watering hole they used to keep beer cool in, and picked up a digital Johnson controls temp controller. The cooler is big, old, dirty, loud, but fits 4 X 6.5 gallon buckets and/or better bottles with room to spare!!
We have yet to put it into service (haven't had time to brew since we got it), but looking forward to automating temp control. We've run it for a couple days, and it seems to run OK and get temps plenty cold for ales (though we've got some more testing to do to see how well it can maintain temps). I think I posted some pics of it here a while back when I got it. If I can find them, I'll post them again.